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Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

bloomberg.com

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Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#61

Post by petepete »

gttalbot wrote: post #46

Why would Facebook not just block messages from Nigeria to rando North American towns at this point? Shouldn't the network analysis required to detect this sort of crime ring be a slam-dunk at this point? I don't get how this is still even possible.

My parents' home phone used to receive several scam calls a week from India. There was no way to stop them short of giving up the landline, which is what I did.

I can't believe phone companies (in the UK) don't provide better protection, even a registry of whitelisted numbers, that could be set for the old/vulnerable.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#62

Post by chr1 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #51

Some thoughts I've had for years: A. My understanding is an underage teen who takes a nude selfie and sends it can be charged with distributing "child porn." This is a serious problem and should not be true. If other people forward it, they should be charged, but a teenager should not get in legal trouble for making a nude selfie and sending it privately. B. We need to culturally get over a lot of our hangups about c…

AI generating realistic nude images from normal images will further these things. Because then there will be nudes for everyone, it will be impossible to prove what is real and what is fake, and therefore pointlessness of chasing of 'illegal" numbers will become obvious to more people.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#63

Post by MarkSweep »

I’m not a teenage boy, but I got targeted by one these. While it was misdirected (they were trying to blackmail me with someone else’s photos), the whole thing was quite disturbing.

Also iMessage really does not seem to be well designed to handle abuse. Your only option is to block, which is a couple of taps away from a conversation. The block does not instantly take effect cross device, so you still get messages on your Apple Watch until you reboot it. Your only option for reporting anything is when deleting a conversation, and all you can do is say it’s spam.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#64

Post by orthoxerox »

jmopp wrote: post #52
gttalbot wrote: post #46

Why would Facebook not just block messages from Nigeria to rando North American towns at this point? Shouldn't the network analysis required to detect this sort of crime ring be a slam-dunk at this point? I don't get how this is still even possible.

On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, the false positives (and the fallout from it) might outweigh the negatives: imagine a volunteer doctor who disappears in West Africa due to being kidnapped/robbed etc and someone local tries to contact the family back home, but all the messages end up getting blocked.

Something simple like a face match or even an email unlock if you connect to the account from an unusual location should work. A lot of websites do that already. So a volunteer doctor from the US opens their phone in Lagos, gets challenged, answers, Meta now knows that Nigerian IPs or whatever VPN they use are fine.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#65

Post by dclowd9901 »

jmopp wrote: post #52
gttalbot wrote: post #46

Why would Facebook not just block messages from Nigeria to rando North American towns at this point? Shouldn't the network analysis required to detect this sort of crime ring be a slam-dunk at this point? I don't get how this is still even possible.

On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, the false positives (and the fallout from it) might outweigh the negatives: imagine a volunteer doctor who disappears in West Africa due to being kidnapped/robbed etc and someone local tries to contact the family back home, but all the messages end up getting blocked.

This seems like such a contrived example.

By all accounts the Dr would probably be in better shape if the kidnappers weren’t able to contact their family.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#66

Post by anal_reactor »

andersa wrote: post #34

I don't understand what would motivate someone to ever send an explicit photo of themselves to a stranger. The whole premise of this scam makes no sense. Like, is this not the most basic of the basics of online safety?

The basic rule of online safety is not to meet people from the internet IRL and even if, never to get into their cars. And yet, the business of calling strangers over the internet specifically to get into their cars somehow grew into a 200 billion dollar industry. Strange world, isn't it.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#67

Post by junon »

MarkSweep wrote: post #63

I’m not a teenage boy, but I got targeted by one these. While it was misdirected (they were trying to blackmail me with someone else’s photos), the whole thing was quite disturbing. Also iMessage really does not seem to be well designed to handle abuse. Your only option is to block, which is a couple of taps away from a conversation. The block does not instantly take effect cross device, so you still get messages on…

A friend of mine was also targeted though they didn't have a real photo of him. They claimed to have hacked his webcam and had some blurry thing printed out, but he doesn't have a webcam.

He called in a panic and I told him to ignore it. Nothing ever came of it (because in this case, how could it - and we're both adults, I convinced him even if it were true why would it matter - again, highly case specific but he agreed it wouldnt).

I doubt the same would be true in all cases, just wanted to share.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#68

Post by anal_reactor »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #51

Some thoughts I've had for years: A. My understanding is an underage teen who takes a nude selfie and sends it can be charged with distributing "child porn." This is a serious problem and should not be true. If other people forward it, they should be charged, but a teenager should not get in legal trouble for making a nude selfie and sending it privately. B. We need to culturally get over a lot of our hangups about c…

Unfortunately, I've noticed that the so-called "public opinion" is only getting more prude, and the denial about teenagers having sex drive is only getting worse. Basically nobody wants to be labelled a pedophile, so nobody wants to touch that problem with a three-meter stick.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#70

Post by DoreenMichele »

chr1 wrote: post #62
DoreenMichele wrote: post #51

Some thoughts I've had for years: A. My understanding is an underage teen who takes a nude selfie and sends it can be charged with distributing "child porn." This is a serious problem and should not be true. If other people forward it, they should be charged, but a teenager should not get in legal trouble for making a nude selfie and sending it privately. B. We need to culturally get over a lot of our hangups about c…

AI generating realistic nude images from normal images will further these things. Because then there will be nudes for everyone, it will be impossible to prove what is real and what is fake, and therefore pointlessness of chasing of 'illegal" numbers will become obvious to more people.

My knee-jerk reaction is that probably some people know what you look like naked. So one means to check: If it's recent, compare it to your actual body.

On the other hand, bodies change over time, so it gets easier to say "That 10 year old pic? No, not real."

(Unless it's extremely attractive. Then enthuse about how gorgeous you once were, I guess, and see if people buy that.)

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